Single line fill

[Arbitur 0]

I really like Cura, its free, has very nice settings and the BEST slicing preview on the market. But there is One thing that I miss, single line fills. Ive been struggling so hard with this in Cura, it got a little better when Compensate Wall Overlaps so you can atleast reduce flow if there is a small gap but it is still lacking. For example in ideaMaker It is very easy to print a single line extrusion since you can specify maxflow and min flow so lets say a gap is 1.5x the line width and max flow is >150% it will make ONE line using 150% flow, and if a gap is say 0.5x the line width and min flow is <50% it will print a single thin line etc.

 

Cylinders are very difficult to print in Cura. I have this fan duct adapter with connects a 120mm fan to a 100mm hose with a tapered wall down to a minimum of linewidth*5 (5 lines) and I get these weird dots when the wall width for a layer is not a whole number of wall lines, ex wallWidth: 2.6, lineWidth: 0.48. 2.6/0.48=5.4.

 

In this picture I have Compensate Wall Overlaps enabled and at 50% min flow. Sure a simple quickfix to get rid of these dots is to disable Compensate Wall Overlaps but then the wall lines just merge into each other and generating overextrusion (Because it is extruding the same material in the same positions twice)

 

 

Edited November 29, 2018 by Arbitur

[burtoogle 509]

Hello @Arbitur, could you please attach a project file that shows this problem and I will investigate. Thanks.

[Arbitur 0]

I hope this is the file you requested. You can look at layer 170 and youll see what I mean.

TT_Fan duct 120-100(Outer).3mf

[burtoogle 509]

Hi @Arbitur, thanks for the file. Although that file contains the model, I also need the settings. Please do File -> Save to save the project file that contains both the model and the settings. Thanks.

[Arbitur 0]

There, that should be it.

TT_Fan duct 120-100(Outer).3mf

[burtoogle 509]

Hello @Arbitur, thanks for the project file. Yes, I those little blobs are generated by the wall overlap compensation. Unfortunately, that part of Cura is quite buggy and it definitely could be improved. With a cross section width that alters with height, it's very difficult to workaround because no one line width will be an exact multiple of the model width.

[burtoogle 509]

You may be interested in trying out my Cura builds which feature various tweaks and fixes that are not in standard Cura. In particular, I have made some improvements to the wall overlap compensation and a recent addition has been a new implementation of the wall gap filling and thin wall support. You can install my releases alongside the Ultimaker releases and they should happily coexist. If you are interested you can find them at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s43vqzmi4d2bqe2/AAADdYdSu9iwcKa0Knqgurm4a?dl=0

[Arbitur 0]

Woah, thanks! I downloaded the win64-20181130 build and it works muuuuuuch better than production version. Did you get the source from GitHub?

 

This is much better however there is still some minor issues with line fill, only minor though.

 

As seen in this image the Compensate Wall Overlap fill line is thinner than the rest but it is unnecessarily close to the inner wall and creating a bigger gap on the outer.

 

While Fill Gaps Between Walls (Everywhere) is dead center between both walls, so Im guessing that the solution to above lies inside this settings code?

[burtoogle 509]

Hi @Arbitur, the sources are in my own github repos which are forked from the Ultimaker originals. See https://www.dropbox.com/s/mzmzgkqn2hnf5zy/README.md?dl=0 for a little more info.

 

Looking at your images above. The green lines are the inner walls and they are subject to overlap compensation. That is an ancient (before I became involved) feature in Cura and the way it works is that when you have a gap that is wider than a single line but not wide enough for two lines then one line is printed normally and the other line is flow reduced. To be honest I don't think it really matters that the lines are not symmetrically spaced because, hot plastic being what it is, the end result is a filled gap. Where that fails, of course, is when the available gap is such that the second line is flow reduced to less than, say, 30% of it's normal flow rate and then you can end up getting blobs and gaps due to the very small extrusions commanded. Of course, it would be better to have two lines of, say, 60% width instead of one line of 100% and the other of 20%. It would require some major work I think to redo the overlap compensation and I'm not signing up for that.

 

What I have done recently is rework the wall gap filling and thin wall support and, as you have observed above, it manages to fill the gaps with a single, variable width, line (yellow in the above images). It's still work in progress but is producing quite nice results. I think perhaps my solution is not the fastest (slice time, not print time) which doesn't worry me because I only print small things but may make it too slow for anyone printing large complex prints that use a lot of wall filling and/or have thin walls.

 

My focus has always been on improved print quality rather than slicer speed.

[Arbitur 0]

On 11/30/2018 at 9:58 PM, smartavionics said:

... the way it works is that when you have a gap that is wider than a single line but not wide enough for two lines then one line is printed normally and the other line is flow reduced.

Thats not so great I would like it to increase flow to fill the gap (to a maximum flow ofc) like S3D and ideaMaker does. Does this lie in Cura or in CuraEngine? I would guess the GUI (Cura) uses the CuraEngine. I am a programmer myself so I might have a go at it, I just dont know where to look, but Ill find out.

 

EDIT: I guess it is in the wallOverlap file?

Edited December 3, 2018 by Arbitur

[burtoogle 509]

Hi @Arbitur, I wish you good luck. I can tell you now that it's hard to fathom how some of that code works, I don't think the original coders (who, incidentally, are still around) even understand how some of that stuff works. My cura does have some changes to that code but I have never managed to understand how a lot of it works so I have given up trying to improve it further. Personally, I think the whole wall overlap system needs ripping out and replacing. But I'm not going to do that because what I am using works sufficiently well for my simple needs.

[joestefano 6]

Hi smartavionics, I just installed your latest build and am printing a model that last night I aborted because the infill action made me think that my brand new S5 was going to shake itself to pieces! How can I keep track of your updates? I attached the 2 files that I am dealing with. My question is could I have achieved what you did with the current version to get rid of the wiggle infill( if that is what it is). Do you see any other settings that I could improve on? I am brand new to Cura and Ultimaker. I have been using S3D for years. Thanks for your time

UMS5_Roof master.3mf

UMS5_Roof 3.6.3mf

[Arbitur 0]

3 hours ago, smartavionics said:

I don't think the original coders (who, incidentally, are still around) even understand how some of that stuff works

Doesnt sound promising, but Ill give it a shot atleast.

[burtoogle 509]

1 minute ago, Arbitur said:

Doesnt sound promising, but Ill give it a shot atleast. 

 

Brave man. You may want to consider incorporating some of the changes I have already made which can be found in the mb-master branch of https://github.com/smartavionics/CuraEngine. Good luck!

[burtoogle 509]

30 minutes ago, joestefano said:

Hi smartavionics, I just installed your latest build and am printing a model that last night I aborted because the infill action made me think that my brand new S5 was going to shake itself to pieces! How can I keep track of your updates? I attached the 2 files that I am dealing with. My question is could I have achieved what you did with the current version to get rid of the wiggle infill( if that is what it is). Do you see any other settings that I could improve on? I am brand new to Cura and Ultimaker. I have been using S3D for years. Thanks for your time

UMS5_Roof master.3mf

UMS5_Roof 3.6.3mf

 

Hi @joestefano, I tried running the Ultimaker 3.6 Linux release and it crashes(!) on initial startup so I can't actually slice your 3.6 project using a real 3.6 release. I can slice the master project using my master release and I can see that it is using the inter-wall gap fill. Is that where it is causing the shakes? Could you please slice using 3.6 and save the output to file but not the default ufp format, tell it to save as gcode and then attach that file to this thread so I can look at the gcode you are getting.

 

My guess is that 3.6 is using zig-zag infill for that inter-wall gap. If I am right then you cannot do anything apart from set fill gaps between walls to nowhere (or use my release!)

[Arbitur 0]

@smartavionics "You have my sword. And my bow. And my github repository!"

[joestefano 6]

Your version worked Great! Here is the G code file from 3.6

UMS5_Roof (repaired).gcode

[burtoogle 509]

Hi @joestefano, thanks for the gcode. You can see the difference when comparing that with the gcode from my Cura:

 

 

 

You asked above about tracking updates. Just revisit that Dropbox folder from time to time. If either I or the Cura developers have made some significant change then I will produce a new release. Please note that these releases are built from "bleeding edge" sources so they can sometimes have (even more) issues than the normal Ultimaker releases although I will not make a release if I am aware of any major problems.